JAKARTA — Residents of Indonesia’s South Sumatra province have filed a lawsuit against three pulpwood companies for a toxic haze that they blame on repeated burning in their concessions. The three companies — PT Bumi Mekar Hijau (BMH), PT Bumi Andalas Permai (BAP) and PT Sebangun Bumi Andalas Wood Industries (SBA Wood Industries) — are […]| Mongabay Environmental News
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s top court is reviewing a lawsuit filed in 2016 by environmental activists calling on the government to pass regulations on forest fires, as the dry season ushers in a new bout of wildfires. The lawsuit was brought in response to the disastrous fires and resultant haze that blanketed large swaths of the […]| Mongabay Environmental News
Pulp and paper supplier PT Bumi Mekar Hijau has been declared guilty of causing fires in South Sumatra by an appeals court in the Indonesian province, reversing a decision that had been seen as a major setback to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s campaign to prosecute fire-linked companies. Smoke from the fires on land controlled by […]| Mongabay Environmental News
Plans to build a railway that would slice South America from east to west, crossing part of the Amazon Rainforest, are advancing with Chinese funding, according to a recent announcement by the Brazilian government. Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, along with ministers and Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping, met in Beijing on […]| Mongabay Environmental News
On Nov. 2, the Kenyan government began demolishing houses and destroying property belonging to Indigenous Ogiek living in the Mau Forest. The Ogiek had won a landmark case in 2017 recognizing their rights to their ancestral land in the forest. The Kenya Forest Service said this did not extend to farming and building homes in […]| Mongabay Environmental News
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — The first big news of the COP27 climate conference was a forest promise: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a 26-nation partnership to conserve woodland ecosystems as “one of the best ways of getting us back on track to 1.5 degrees” of warming. This Forest and Climate Leaders Partnership is […]| Mongabay Environmental News
The yellow-legged hornet is a predator: after it sets up a nest in a new neighborhood, its workers head out in search of smaller wasps, flies and bees to feed the hive’s growing brood. One of its favorite snacks is honey bees. Lingering outside a hive, these hornets, Vespa velutina, capture flying honey bees mid-air, […]| Mongabay Environmental News
A researcher at the INPE Center of Land System Science, Antonio Donato Nobre, describes the state of degradation threatening the future of the Amazon rainforest in an exclusive interview with Mongabay.| Mongabay Environmental News
During the second week of October 2023, in northern Chile’s Coquimbo, Yasna Silva used social media to ask for help. She and her entire family had been sued by the Los Pelambres Mining Company. The reason? Neither she, nor the rest of the residents of her community, Pupío, had agreed to the expansion of a […]| Mongabay Environmental News
Iluka Alain was a bit surprised when the two men turned up on a motorcycle in December 2021 in Bofekalasumba, the village where he’s chief in the northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo. The men spoke in Lingala, a widely spoken language in the DRC, and said they were from a company called KMS. They seemed […]| Mongabay Environmental News
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A new and alarming pattern of destruction is emerging in the rainforest, challenging Brazilian authorities ahead of COP30.| Mongabay Environmental News
JAKARTA — Indonesia, one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, has signaled it might follow in the footsteps of the U.S. and withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. “If the United State [the second-biggest emitter after China] does not want to comply with the international agreement, why should a country like Indonesia comply with […]| Mongabay Environmental News
In a defining moment for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Peru, 37 land titles were secured in the Amazon in record time, from June 2023 to May 2024. This is not only a remarkable land rights victory for the region, but it also marks a significant step towards addressing climate change, reclaiming Indigenous peoples’ […]| Mongabay Environmental News
This article was co-produced with The Gecko Project. JAKARTA — Indigenous people in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province are protesting against a company that’s preparing to raze their ancestral forest for a plantation megaproject plagued by allegations of irregularities and wrongdoing. Members of the Auyu tribe are demanding the government freeze the operations of PT Indo […]| Mongabay Environmental News
Caribou are proudly displayed on Canada’s 25-cent coin, but in the wild, their populations are on the verge of annihilation. Carmen Richter from the Saulteau First Nations is working to change that. She’s part of an Indigenous-led conservation program whose interventions have led one caribou herd in western Canada to triple its population in less than a decade, […]| Mongabay Environmental News
Tomorrow, Ecuadorians will cast their votes in a referendum to decide whether oil drilling should continue in Yasuní National Park, a rainforest reserve located in one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth. Yasuní is also the home of the Tagaeri, Dugakaeri, and Taromenane, the last Indigenous communities in Ecuador who have chosen to […]| Mongabay Environmental News
JAKARTA — Excavators have begun clearing land in the Indonesian region of Papua in what’s been described as the largest deforestation undertaking in the world. A total of 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of forests, wetlands and grasslands in Merauke district will be razed to make way for a cluster of giant sugarcane plantations, […]| Mongabay Environmental News
Experts urge stronger law enforcement to curb the sale and consumption of manatee meat, while conservation efforts focus on educating communities on the importance of the mammal to the biome.| Mongabay Environmental News
Mangroves may be the world’s most carbon rich forests, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. Measuring the carbon stored in 25 mangrove forests in the Indo-Pacific region, researchers found that mangroves forests stored up to four times as much carbon as other tropical forests, including rainforests. “Mangroves have long been known as extremely […]| Conservation news